Washington: Now a new tool has been developed that offers a tongue-in-cheek way of warning people if they have gone too far in criticizing their boss or workplace on Twitter. The tool FireMe, created by Ricardo Kawase and colleagues at the University of Hanover in Germany, reminds people how risky it can be complaining about your job publicly on the micro blogging site.

In a single week last June, they found almost 22,000 people who had tweeted about their job or boss in a negative way. The team used an algorithm that looked for telltale phrases indicating someone had tweeted something negative about their boss or job.

The user then received an automated alert tweet from FireMe! which rebuked them with the message: "Can you imagine if your boss gets to know that you said: 'I hate my job so much'. You said that on Twitter and the whole world can see it!"

Each alert also contained a link which, if followed, gave them their FireMeter! score - their chance of being fired as a percentage. It was calculated just for fun, but was based on how often they had mentioned their job negatively in the past 100 tweets and how often they swore.

Each user was also given the chance to click one of three options when they followed the link: "Delete that compromising tweet!", "Check my privacy settings on twitter", or "I don't care!". The team said that young or inexperienced users would certainly benefit from post-hoc privacy alerts and warnings like FireMe!